Nice quote by Daniel Lanois

[Phait]

"All artists have a code of ethics they're operating by, and that we're all driven by commitment. Commitment in itself is quite serious decision, you come up as a kid and decide to embrace music and its not something that one takes lightly, because it becomes a way of life and as performers we witness the raising of the spirit... you know, the capacity that music has to change the feeling of a room. so we cant help but be spiritual people"

 

[Jotown]

+1

 

Very nice, very true.

[UstadKhanAli]

He has a very spiritual outlook to music, and I think that it's quotes like this that make him so effective as a musician and producer. As a producer, he seem to always draw out inspired performances.

 

I've also had the pleasure of meeting him twice, and he seems to be gentle and super kind and spiritual but also kind of funny, with a real liking for the ladies.

[Ernest Buckley]

I direct choirs for a living... most of the time I`m dealing with amateurs. But the one thing that relates across all levels of musicianship is the feeling that music can create so I always preach to my choirs, "feel the song before you sing the first note.... we are not here to sing notes, we are here to create feelings."

 

I think the same applies to records.

[Magpel]

I actually don't understand how all the parts of that statement fit together--code of ethics, big decision not to be taken lightly, coming up, spiritual people. I mean, it seems to me self-flattering in as many as six different and only loosely related ways

 

But yeah, while I am leery of the word spiritual to describe what "it" is, sure, Danny. I read you, babe.

[Hard Truth]

As an agnostic I don't consider myself 'spiritual' but I am in awe of the power of music to change moods and create community. I don't think there is anything supernatural about it, but we are far from having a complete understanding of the ways music and sound impacts the mind and body.

[the stranger]

I've also had the pleasure of meeting him twice, and he seems to be gentle and super kind and spiritual but also kind of funny, with a real liking for the ladies.

 

He was hitting on your girlfriend?

[the stranger]

I don't think there is anything supernatural about it, but we are far from having a complete understanding of the ways music and sound impacts the mind and body.

 

Have you seen Slayer live? Just the fact that four guys who happen to be fairly inanimate performers (they just stand there), these guys can take ten thousand people and move them with a force most televangelists would be jealous of.

 

So, I'm a very spiritual person. And I do believe that music is magic. Actual magic. Yeah. Call me a kook.

 

The main reason I'm a spiritual person is because I can feel it. I can feel that my consciousness and my physical self are not one, but two entities waging a battle for control.

 

And being agnostic doesn't mean you can't be a spiritual person.

 

 

This concludes my preaching to Hard Truth.

[Magpel]

 

And being agnostic doesn't mean you can't be a spiritual person.

 

 

Damn straight--"agnostic" means nothing more than "I don't know." Tomorrow, you might see the sun turn into a grapefruit and drop at your feet. You eat the grapefruit, and suddenly you know all, and are no longer agnostic. Agnostic implies no belief, and no particular stance toward belief and believing. It simply describes a current, contingent condition that might change at any time.

 

Agnosticism is misrepresneted every time it is called a belief or a philosophy. Granted there are those who think agnosticism means, "you don't know, either," or "we can't know." But the true spirit of agnosticism, ha ha, would prohibit me from thinking I knew what other people know or don't know. I might someday, though.

 

Now, by what measure one might say, "now, I know," well that's the rub, but I am under no pressure to define "real" knowledge, because I am not professing agnosticism.

 

Agnosticism, also, is not just another word for rationalism. The agnostic is not saying "prove it" to believers. Any agnostic might well think that very irrational truths and realities are quite possible--in fact, the shocking nature of consciousness itself inclines me to think the irrational might be true-- but, at present, at this moment, "I do not know."

 

 

Dig?

[the stranger]

Dig. And I love this part:

 

Tomorrow, you might see the sun turn into a grapefruit and drop at your feet. You eat the grapefruit, and suddenly you know all...

[UstadKhanAli]

He was hitting on your girlfriend?

 

He was being rather charming to her!!

[UstadKhanAli]

Spiritual, agnostic, I don't know, but I feel like we are dancing around something that we all know and feel in slightly different wayas.

[alfonso]

I liked a lot a Theodore Adorno's sentence about art (in the broad meaning, comprehensive of music) that I reported in my signature, which offers a perspective on creativity and spirituality that doesn't imply anything supernatural. Considering that there has been a search and a debate on the meaning of "art" for centuries, I find this one absolutely great.

[UstadKhanAli]

Sounds good to me!

[Jotown]

I have never known of a truly great artist who was not aware - on some level at least - that his/her art came from somewhere bigger than themselves. "Spiritual", and "Feeling" are common things when it comes to music. When something makes your hair stand on end, or makes you cry, it isn't a mental or ratiional process; it is a feeling, spiritual process.

 

You can impress people with your technique or your mastery of your insturment, but you move people with the feelings that you are able to evoke. That my friends is as spirtual as anything ever gets.

 

Also; Spirtual and Religious are not the same thing. You can be an agnostic or an atheist in regards to religion, but not to spirituality in general as it is not a philsophy or a belief system, but something that one experiences.

[alfonso]

 

I have never known of a truly great artist who was not aware - on some level at least - that his/her art came from somewhere bigger than themselves.

 

 

I never met one who did. Usually they were people trying to give much more importance to what they did...a sort of "divinity" sticker to something pretty common. I much prefer those who take full responsibility of what they do.

There is nothing I despise more than fake modesty.

 

If you want to say, instead, that each person is more or less able to synthesize and to model through his own personality a tradition, a cultural heritage that sums what has been done by generations and to inject influences coming from other minds and cultures, thus effectively pulling out something bigger than a single person's experience, I agree, but what makes of it something intense, something able to evoke feelings, that's the subjectivity. It all happens because at a certain point you are alone with yourself, your memories, your visions and you cry to be heard. And it is that request of love that makes it moving.

I think that what moves the listener is not in the song as a set of words and notes but in the life act, the performance when it is sincere. A good song is a song that allows this sincerity, you can detect this quality in the content, but you will feel it when someone is feeling it. Pretty much like loving each other, a game of mirrors, you watch yourself in someone's eyes, you hear yourself in someone's voice.

 

Feelings are what one feels, everyone has them unless some severe brain damage occurs. Why bother other entities? They are mental processes as well.

[blue2blue]

 

As an agnostic I don't consider myself 'spiritual' but I am in awe of the power of music to change moods and create community. I don't think there is anything supernatural about it, but we are far from having a complete understanding of the ways music and sound impacts the mind and body.

 

I'm technically an agnostic, as well. I don't believe in the notion of "the supernatural" -- but at the same time, all is not known (hence my self-classification as an agnostic).

 

In fact, my perhaps peculiar way of looking at our universe seems to make it more mysterious and deeply resonant with what I take to be a transcendent view.

 

Music, like mathematics, like physics, seems to make me more aware of the mystery and revelation of our universe...

[Lee Knight]

There is an excellent article in this week's The Economist called Why Music? Look for the cover with a Cherub playing a guitar. Great read.

 

Like cheesecake, music sates an appetite that nature cannot...

 

Why? Some feel that like the babbling brook, it calms. Like the roaring tiger, it fires you up. And music is just a refined and evolved, man made, stimulus mirroring similar stimulus in nature. But with years of refinement to heighten its intended impact.

 

Picture a crying baby in the arms a her cave mom. Cave mom knows when she is angry, sometimes the sound of the "water that falls off mountain" sooths her. So she hums to her child like the water sound, and the breeze through the trees.

 

Hmm.

 

Hey! here it is! http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=12795510

[Dean Roddey]

 

Dig. And I love this part: Tomorrow, you might see the sun turn into a grapefruit and drop at your feet. You eat the grapefruit, and suddenly you know all...

 

 

Hey, you can do that any time. Just add LSD. You won't be able to remembe the next day that you knew all of course, but if you did they'd have to kill you anyway.

[Jotown]

I never met one who did. Usually they were people trying to give much more importance to what they did...a sort of "divinity" sticker to something pretty common. I much prefer those who take full responsibility of what they do. There is nothing I despise more than fake modesty. If you want to say, instead, that each person is more or less able to synthesize and to model through his own personality a tradition, a cultural heritage that sums what has been done by generations and to inject influences coming from other minds and cultures, thus effectively pulling out something bigger than a single person's experience, I agree, but what makes of it something intense, something able to evoke feelings, that's the subjectivity. It all happens because at a certain point you are alone with yourself, your memories, your visions and you cry to be heard. And it is that request of love that makes it moving. I think that what moves the listener is not in the song as a set of words and notes but in the life act, the performance when it is sincere. A good song is a song that allows this sincerity, you can detect this quality in the content, but you will feel it when someone is feeling it. Pretty much like loving each other, a game of mirrors, you watch yourself in someone's eyes, you hear yourself in someone's voice. Feelings are what one feels, everyone has them unless some severe brain damage occurs. Why bother other entities? They are mental processes as well.

No thanks. I said what I said and I meant what I wrote. Feelings are not a mental process, they are an emotional process. There are specific disorders in which a person functions very well on the mental level but not at all well on the emotional/feeling level.

 

Sociopaths are one example of such a disorder.

 

A healthy human has to function on several levels, the mental and emotional being just two. Artistic expression that does not evoke some kind of feeling response is one dimensional and flat in my opinion. Unless it was meant to be a flat one demensional mental expression devoid of feeling. In that case I guess its ok.

[alfonso]

No thanks. I said what I said and I meant what I wrote. Feelings are not a mental process, they are an emotional process. There are specific disorders in which a person functions very well on the mental level but not at all well on the emotional/feeling level. Sociopaths are one example of such a disorder. A healthy human has to function on several levels, the mental and emotional being just two. Artistic expression that does not evoke some kind of feeling response is one dimensional and flat in my opinion. Unless it was meant to be a flat one demensional mental expression devoid of feeling. In that case I guess its ok.

 

I see...well, we don't agree here. I think that you are confusing "mental" with "rational". Emotions are mental processes as well, if you mean "brain functions" as mental processes. In fact the lobotomy, which is the removal of some frontal areas of the brain removes some emotions completely. Emotional changes are observed after brain injuries as well as with some deseases. Drugs act on the brain and change the emotions. The whole emotional process also reverberates on the whole endocrine system, muscles etc, with the typical reactions associated. Human mind is complex enough to manage all those functions.

[Jotown]

Alphonso; while certainly all data is processed by the brain there are distinct and different kinds of data. It is well known in educational circles that different people are predisposed to leaning on one kind of data over the other. Some people are mental/intellectual, some are emotional/feeling, some are physical/kinesthetic.

 

There is a good book called "TheBell Curve" that discusses this in depth. The point being that some people like music that makes them feel something, some people like music that makes them think, some people like music that physically moves them.

 

I work with people in a counseling capacity and it is very helpful to understand which modality (mental, emotional or physical) they are stronger in because that is the best mode by which to reach them. It is the same with music in my opinion. Now you can continue to argue semantics over the word

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Alphonso; while certainly all data is processed by the brain there are distinct and different kinds of data. It is well known in educational circles that different people are predisposed to leaning on one kind of data over the other. Some people are mental/intellectual, some are emotional/feeling, some are physical/kinesthetic.

 

 

The idea of multiple intelligences has been popular in psychology for quite some time now. And as teachers, we were frequently taught Howard Gardner's theory of seven core intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal. He has since proposed several new categories since I graduated from the Master's Program.

 

To be fair, although quite popular in educational circles, Gardner's theory of seven (or more) core intelligences is rather controversial in psychological circles.

 

I believe that it is quite popular in educational circles because addressing someone's tendencies to learn is indeed rather effective, regardless of the actual underlying etiologies. Tapping into several learning modalities is always good for engaging kids, and having them do things - or presenting material to them - in several different ways is going to have a profound impact on their learning regardless of the actual science behind it.

 

This probably doesn't do anything to completely support what Jotown or Alphonso is saying, but might nevertheless be interesting to both and others.

[alfonso]

 

Alphonso; while certainly all data is processed by the brain there are distinct and different kinds of data. It is well known in educational circles that different people are predisposed to leaning on one kind of data over the other. Some people are mental/intellectual, some are emotional/feeling, some are physical/kinesthetic.   There is a good book called "TheBell Curve" that discusses this in depth. The point being that some people like music that makes them feel something, some people like music that makes them think, some people like music that physically moves them.   I work with people in a counseling capacity and it is very helpful to understand which modality (mental, emotional or physical) they are stronger in because that is the best mode by which to reach them. It is the same with music in my opinion. Now you can continue to argue semantics over the word

[Jotown]

Aphonso; you are way too intelligent to not understand what I mean. There have been numerous instances of people getting organ transplants and then having memories from the donor. There is even a case of a young girl who recieved a heart transplant from a murder victim and the memories that she had helped catch the murderer.

 

The point is that if you believe that all that you are is contained in your brain that is ok with me. Even though I know (and science has proven) that there are many non mental (rational) types of knowing.

 

It is my contention that music deals with these non brain levels as well as the mental level. I would hope that my music has the ability to connect with people on many non mental (rational) levels. Now if you want to call that spirtual that is fine with me.